In August, after being denied a secretary-level position in the Union government, Indian Administrative Services officer Vineet Chawdhary filed a case questioning the legal validity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “360-degree appraisal” system for promoting senior civil servants. Despite his petition, the Union government did not think it fit to grant him the position. But in December, Chawdhary was picked to be the chief secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s new government in Himachal Pradesh, where he heads the state’s bureaucracy.The 360-degree appraisal system is a process that the prime minister approved in April 2015 to supplement the existing review mechanism to assess whether IAS officers are capable of holding the most senior positions of additional secretary and secretary in the Union government.

Will the corporate-style 360-degree feedback tool work in evaluating civil servants?

It was a wake-up call for several bureaucrats in Delhi last year when they failed to make the cut as additional secretaries, just a rung below the coveted post of a secretary at the Centre.

The reason: the Narendra Modi government’s introduced 360-degree feedback tool for officers on the threshold of becoming Additional Secretaries or Secretaries. Till then, empanelment committees would select civil servants for top jobs based on their annual progress reports or confidentiality reports. These reports were generated by just one person: the immediate boss of the officer under review. Many officers are happy with the decision and others feel that the corporate style feedback system may prove as a litmus test for IAS officers.